Pablo Neruda

Raw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness.

When I sleep every night, what am I called or not called? And when I wake, who am I if I was not I while I slept?

Whom can I ask what I came to make happen in this world? Why do I move without wanting to, why am I not able to sit still? Why do I go rolling without wheels, flying without wings or feathers, and why did I decide to migrate if my bones live in Chile?

Take bread away from me, if you wish, take air away, but do not take from me your laughter.

Sufre mas el que espera siempre que aquel que nunca espero a nadie? Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?

If you should ask me where I've been all this time I have to say "Things happen." I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth, on the river ruined in its own duration: I know nothing save things the birds have lost, the sea I left behind, or my sister crying. Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock with day? Why the dark night swilling round in our mouths? And why the dead?

Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning.

Donde termina el arco iris, en tu alma o en el horizonte? Where does the rainbow end, in your soul or on the horizon?

I do not love you-except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, from waiting to not waiting for you my heart moves from the cold into the fire.

The road made wet by the water of August shines like it was cut in full moonlight

We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish Under the net of our kisses.

You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

This time is difficult. Wait for me. We will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel, we will rejoice. We are once more the pair who lived in bristling places, in harsh nests in the rock. This time is difficult. Wait for me with a basket, with a shovel, with your shoes and your clothes. Now we need each other, not only for the carnations' sake, not only to look for honey — we need our hands to wash with, to make fire.

What does autumn go on paying for with so much yellow money?

You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop.

Your house sounds like a train at midday, the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing, the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .

He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.

And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.